![]() In 1980, a governmental wildlife conservation agency that’s now called Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife reintroduced wild dogs to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi. Farmers and hunters nearly eliminated them from Hluhluwe-iMfolozi and the rest of the region by the 1930s. By 1901, colonial officials had placed a bounty of one pound on the head of every wild dog. Wild dogs-which kill livestock-were viewed as vermin, and were not on the list of animals to be conserved. Even decades before the environmental movement, colonialists sensed that they should set aside space to preserve the region’s wildlife. Hunters had driven popular game animals, like the white rhinoceros, to the brink of extinction. Wild dogs rinse off after a successful hunt.īritish colonialists established Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in 1895. “Just as much as how much land you’re putting in for protection.” “The habitat in that land that you’re protecting really matters,” he says. His prescription involves building parks on land with many types of interconnected habitats so that dogs can easily access a variety of hiding places. “There’s this prescription that’s emerging for how you build a diverse park setting that will hold a diverse number of animals that can coexist with very lightweight management,” says Greg Asner, the director of Arizona State University’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation, who was also involved in the study. Davies hopes this information will inform long-term conservation strategies that will hopefully rescue dogs from the threat of extinction. This finding, published recently in Ecology, shows that wild dog conservation projects can succeed in areas with lions, if these areas have highly variable landscapes. They found that wild dogs are experts at hiding, and that taking cover in scrub brush, holes and gullies helped them circumvent lions and escape death. Through an international collaboration, he and other scientists combined a high-resolution map of the park with data from tracking collars on dogs and lions. Davies had a hunch that all these features helped dogs survive in the presence of lions. Hluhluwe-iMfolozi is known for its highly variable landscape, with rolling hills, grassland, wide rivers and large floodplains. “Lions and wild dogs have coevolved,” he says, adding that it makes sense that wild dogs have figured out ways to survive with lions around. Now an organismic and evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, Davies grew up in South Africa near Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park-a 370-square-mile nature reserve that supports a healthy wild dog population despite also being home to many lions. Jocelin Kagan, from Africa’s Wild Dogs: A Survival StoryĪndrew Davies had a feeling this didn’t need to be the case. Wild dogs are no match for the strength and speed of lions. For that reason, conservationists have long focused on reintroducing wild dogs-an endangered species-to areas where lions are scarce. ![]() Lions and wild dogs share some of the same prey species, like impala, so lions view dogs as threats to their food supply, and try to kill any dogs they can catch. ![]() But despite their prowess, there’s one animal wild dogs won’t take on: lions.Įven a small 300-pound female lion can easily kill a dog. Packs can easily take down an impala or a wildebeest. Weighing around 50 pounds, these canines may look cute with their pink tongues protruding from beneath their black noses, but tight-knit families and cooperative hunting techniques put wild dogs among Sub-Saharan Africa’s top predators. Mottled black-and-brown African wild dogs often prance and squeak through grasslands, chattering like birds.
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